Hazel joined Corpus just four years after the first admission of female undergraduates. She came to Cambridge with a passion for science and innovation, looking forward to learning about new technologies. She remembers being interviewed by a Fellow who had not heard of her school, which she admits made her feel pretty inferior. On reflection she acknowledges this was something that may have been experienced by many female undergraduate applicants at the time, as the all-girls schools would not have been on their radar.

“I did well at school, I was top of the year and got great results, as everybody at Cambridge did. So when I came to Corpus, I just thought wow, there are so many people here who are much more intelligent than me. The classes were so difficult. That first year was a real period of adjustment to find my level and get comfortable with what I was doing.”

“Looking back, you can see the amount of effort it takes on the part of the tutorial infrastructure, making the students stretch along the line of independent thought, and I find it sad how many places don't do that.”

Outside of her studies Hazel embraced the sporting side of College life, playing both squash and tennis, but ultimately going on to excel at karate. “The reason I took up karate, apart from the fact that I was interested in it, was because there wasn't a very vibrant women's sport option in College at the time.”

“I found my sport and it was a great outlet. There's nothing like getting to the end of a tough day, and then going into the dojo and kicking and punching to get rid of your stress.”

Hazel went on to achieve her full blue in karate and later became a national champion. After graduation she went to Japan with the Cambridge University Karate Club to study karate, something that would ultimately change the trajectory of life.

“I just wanted to stay in Asia, so I went to Hong Kong, found a job and stayed for five years. Looking back, if I hadn't done karate and gone to Japan, I would almost certainly have ended up working in a science, in a technical capacity in the UK and had a completely different career path.”

In Hong Kong Hazel took an entry level role as an analyst in a financial services firm and on returning to the UK she worked in the city for a few years before setting up FirstCapital, which she co-founded whilst pregnant with her first child.

“I've always been interested in science, innovation and new ideas. So, although we are a financial advisory firm, we specialise in advising technology companies, and we've worked with a number of spinouts from the University of Cambridge.”

“Interestingly there are very few women in this sort of intersection, there aren't very many women in investment banking, and certainly not in senior positions. There also aren't very many women in the technology industry, so when you put those together, there aren't very many women who do what I do.”

Hazel was awarded an OBE in the 2017 New Years’ Honours list for services to entrepreneurship and innovation.